The Barbie cake

I never thought I would have a reason to make one of these; two boys with interests in electronics doesn't allow much room for this type of cake. 

This cake wasn't for a seven year old girl with glitter all over her arms, though.  One of my friends wanted this cake for her husband.  She had promised that when he graduated she would get him a KU Barbie cake.  I wasn't there for the conversations, but in my mind this was something he said he wanted as a joke several times over a few years, and when they celebrated his PhD graduation there was no way the cake could be anything else.

She bought the Barbie and did some research online about how to make a cake with a full Barbie doll rather than one of those creepy half Barbie picks.  I was initially unsure about the stability of a cake with a huge hollow area in the center, but there were no problems at all.  I baked two batches of cake and divided it into three pans:  a nine inch round, an eight inch round, and a small pyrex glass bowl (around six inches in diameter).  I used a round cookie cutter to cut out the centers of each layer as I filled and stacked the cake, then added a generous amount of frosting around the outside.  I'm a believer in adding frosting rather than sculpting cake if I can get away with it...it's less trouble and well, it's more frosting.  I knew the dress needed to be red or blue for a KU feel, and both of those frosting tints can add a bitter element to the flavor.  Let's just say there was enough regular (in this case, chocolate malt) frosting underneath that blue frosting to be able to scrape that off and still have a nice cake experience.

Here is Barbie, getting ready to put on her dress. I wrapped her up in cellophane to keep her as frosting-free as possible and helped her step into her gown.

I was a little bit preoccupied with the Barbie hair.  I kept worrying about that getting into the frosting and wanted to do everything I could to keep that from happening...so I french braided her hair.   

And the final touch: a poured sugar Jayhawk (I made the silicone mold with a cookie cutter) with an LED light behind it at the base of her dress. 

I used the cake scraps and leftover frosting to make chocolate malt cake pops.  I couldn't let that go to waste...